TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- President Hassan Rouhani has called for unity among Iran’s political factions to overcome conditions which he said may be harder than those during the 1980s war with Iraq as the country faces tightening U.S. sanctions.
"Today, it cannot be said whether conditions are better or worse than the (1980-88) war period, but during the war we did not have a problem with our banks, oil sales or imports and exports, and there were only sanctions on arms purchases,” Rouhani said, according to official news agency IRNA.
"The pressures by enemies is a war unprecedented in the history of our Islamic Revolution... but I do not despair and have great hope for the future and believe that we can move past these difficult conditions provided that we are united,” Rouhani told activists from various factions.
The U.S. escalation has put into question the future of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal that Iran signed with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.
U.S. President Donald Trump last year unilaterally abandoned the deal and re-imposed sanctions - and Iran has indicated it may also resume nuclear activities if the other partners go along with American sanctions.
Rouhani, however, said the outside pressure would never cause the Iranian nation to give up.
"Giving in is not consistent with our culture and religion and people won’t accept it, thus we should not accept submission and we should try to find a solution,” he said.
The comments came three days after Rouhani sent letters to representatives of major global powers in Tehran, notifying them of Iran’s decision to suspend parts of its commitments under a landmark nuclear agreement which was signed in 2015.
In his letter to the ambassadors, Rouhani set a 60-day deadline for other parties to the JCPOA to either change the terms of the agreement or face Iran resume its nuclear enrichment program.
Italy and Greece, both of which had waivers on the initial, six-month round of U.S. sanctions, haven’t bought any Iranian crude since October.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet on Sunday that U.S. national security adviser John Bolton had made plans for the United States to withdraw from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal and take a more aggressive posture toward the Islamic Republic even before he took up his current post.
Zarif tweeted a link to a 2017 National Review article written by Bolton with the headline "How to Get Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal.”
"A detailed blueprint for #FakeIntelligence, #ForeverWar and even empty offers for talks—only phone numbers were not included,” Zarif wrote in the tweet.
CNN reported on Friday that the White House had passed a telephone number to the Swiss for contacting U.S. President Donald Trump in case Iranian officials want to hold talks. The offer has become a butt of joke among ordinary Iranians.
The Swiss embassy in Tehran represents U.S. interests in the Islamic Republic.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Saturday that Iran was an active threat to American interests, but the White House would "of course” welcome the opportunity to negotiate with Tehran.
"We’ve done all the right things to increase our security posture to the best of our ability,” Pompeo told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble, "but we also want to make sure that we had deterrent forces in place, so in the event that Iran decided to come after an American interest — whether that be in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Yemen, or any place in the Middle East — we were prepared to respond to them in an appropriate way.”
Despite the greater military presence in the region, the secretary of state stressed that the U.S. isn’t looking for a fight — and it wouldn’t stumble into one either.
"We’re not going to miscalculate: Our aim is not war, our aim is a change in the behavior of the Iranian leadership,” he said. "The forces that we’re putting in place, the forces that we’ve had in the region before — you know, we often have carriers in the Persian Gulf — but the president wanted to make sure that, in the event something took place, we were prepared to respond to it in an appropriate way.”
Pompeo then said he has prepared diplomatic options so that Trump has choices "in the event that the Iranians make a bad decision.”
America’s primary strategy is its sanctions on Iran. Those economic restrictions have led to tough conditions for everyday Iranians. Pompeo claimed, however, that the United States is targeting only the country’s officials.
"These sanctions are directed at the Iranian leadership to change their behavior — point blank, point blank,” the American official said.
Despite Washington’s open antagonism, Pompeo repeated that the White House would be happy to receive overtures from Iran to sort out some of their differences.
"Of course we would welcome that call. Of course we want a peaceful diplomatic resolution to each of these conflicts that we’ve talked about here today,” he told CNBC. "That makes perfect sense.”